General
Write it Now
A friend of mine has a peculiar death fantasy. Whenever we discuss our mortality (more often than is healthy, probably), he insists that when the doctors tell him that he’s got X months to live he’ll sell the house, liquidate his savings, and head to Las Vegas so he can spend what time he has left living the high life, and hopefully keel over with a Scotch in one hand and a steak dinner in front of him.
I always politely point out the obvious flaw in this thinking: What if you, you know, don’t get the warning? What if a piano falls on you, or your doctor says you have X days left instead of months? And he has no answer. I try to urge him to live a little bit right now. Maybe don’t sell the house, but maybe take a vacation to Vegas and have that steak sooner rather than later.
The same goes for writing. We all have other things going on. We have Day Jobs and families and chores and leaking roofs and broken transmissions and sick kids and such. It’s easy to imagine that someday you will finally sit down and start writing that book that’s been nudging you in the brain for the last few weeks, months, years, decades.
The fact is, there’s no perfect time, no ideal moment. Start writing today, because, yep, a piano might fall on you tomorrow.
That Means You
This isn’t advice that only applies to aspiring writers or newcomers to the peculiar hell called Being a Writer. This goes for all of us. We all have projects we’ve put off—because it’s too complex or time-consuming, because we have to write for a living today, because we’re not sure we can pull it off artistically. And we all have to remind ourselves of the piano hovering over us, suspended by a thin wire, that could drop at any time.
Certain activities always seem pointlessly risky to me. I always say that I don’t want my last words to ever be Why did I do this? I don’t want my last words to be, why did I agree to skydive? Or, why did I agree to ride this insane rollercoaster? You can’t avoid death forever, but I never want my final thoughts to be all-consuming regret because I chose to do something that was obviously potentially deadly.
In the same vein, I don’t want to think gosh, I should have written that novel about cats where the cats are secretly angels trying to stop the apocalypse but their owners won’t let them out of the house. I may not finish every idea I have, but I’m going to fucking die trying. And so should you.
Avoid Busywork
Writing a novel (or, sometimes, even a short story) often requires a lot of work that isn’t writing. This could be research, or world-building no one will ever see, or getting your workspace set up in a way that’s conducive to your style. It might mean taking some time off and renting a yurt or something so you can dedicate yourself to the work. Or it might mean reading a ton of books in the same genre or category so you can get a feel for what’s current, what’s common, and what’s overdone.
All of that sort of work is sometimes necessary, but it can also become Busywork, and thus a way to feel like you’re accomplishing something without actually writing anything.
Writing Feng Shui
There’s an old cliché of someone procrastinating by obsessing over their workspace. They’ll get started on this novel as soon as they get the desk set up exactly the way they want, or as soon as they have perfect quiet, or as soon as they figure out the perfect word processing software that is ideal for their work style. They spend weeks ordering gadgets and arranging the furniture in their home office but never actually write anything.
That’s an obvious delaying tactic, but there are other ways of putting off the inevitable moment when you have to type CHAPTER ONE and begin the process of turning your ideas into a coherent narrative. This can come in the form of endless research, one source of info always leading to another, ad infinitum forever and ever world without end. Or it could mean working on minute details of your world-building backstory. Maybe you spend six months creating a language for your tribe of half-elk, half-men. Or maybe you spend a year sketching the coat of arms for every prominent family in your fictional city.
This stuff is fun, and it might serve a very good purpose for your creative process. But it can—not necessarily will, but can—also become a way of feeling like you’re doing good writing without actually, you know, writing anything.
Finding that balance can be challenging, but a good rule of thumb is simple: Did you actually write anything today? Then you’re not writing, no matter how much work you put into everything else.
One note: Drinking is never busywork and is always necessary to the creative process. And I will fight anyone who says otherwise <tears off shirt, screams>.
Give Yourself Permission to Fail
Writing is a messy business. You might imagine that as you progress along your artistic and professional path things get cleaner and simpler—that you’re able to bang out clean, powerful prose at any moment without all the mess of false starts and revision, but you’d be what Literary Scientists call ?wrong.’
Yes, you get better at certain things. Organizing your thoughts, jump-starting beginnings, crafting thesis statements and arguments. Research, process—there are plenty of things you get better at, including recognizing when the words you’ve just put down on the page or screen are absolute hot trash (note to self: Absolute Hot Trash is a great band name). But you’ll probably never hit a point where you can bang out a draft of a novel or story quickly and nail it every time. Maybe sometimes. Maybe when motivation or inspiration really smacks you. But in general you have to give yourself permission to fail.
Nothin’ but a Number
This can be difficult to accept when you’ve attained a certain amount of experience and success. After all, if you’ve written and sold novels, been anthologized, won awards you must know what you’re doing! And yet you’ll still write stuff that is the aforementioned Absolute Hot Trash. You’ll still get a novel 66% of the way and then watch it fall apart. You’ll still review yesterday’s work and be dismayed that your sentences have all the flow of a high school kid rapping for the first time after drinking an entire bottle of Jägermeister by themselves.
The best thing—the only thing—you can is to give yourself permission to fail. Permission to write Absolute Hot Trash. Permission to delete 10,000 words and start over.
The important thing to remember here is that failing in a creative endeavor is not only not unusual even for veterans, it’s healthy. It’s necessary. It’s like a controlled burn that clears out the dead underbrush and old growth so new saplings can emerge. It should be embraced.
Most importantly, recognizing that you’ve screwed the pooch on a piece of writing means you’re still able to tell the fucking difference between good work and bad. If you ever feel like you’re in some amazing Zone where everything breaks your way and you haven’t done shitty work in a long time, get suspicious.
Of course, don’t make my mistake: Remember to also give yourself permission to succeed. Whew, the wasted years!
Reading for You
One of the best pieces of advice any writer can receive is the admonition to read constantly and widely. There’s no better writing class than the brilliant writers who have come before you—that’s not a revelation, it’s the sort of advice we all kind of know instinctively, I think.
The writing world can be a little insular. Once you start following agents and writers in Twitter and keeping up with all the spilled tea behind the publishing scenes, it gets a little echo-chambery, and part of that effect is the reading list. Every week there’s a new batch of book you’re “supposed” to read because it’s the new hot thing in literary circles, or because of its back-story, or simply because everyone on your feeds is talking about it.
You can’t go wrong reading anything, really, but sometimes you need to step back from the “must read” hot lists and read some book just because you want to.
Break Out
One of the most depressing things about life is that someday you will be gone, but people will continue to produce books, films, and other art. Yes, someday they will release a Star Wars movie and you will be dead, and thus unable to see it. And someday a novel that you would absolutely love will be released, and you will not be able to read it. Again, because in this scenario—in case it isn’t clear—you are dead.
Trying to keep up with the current hot takes in the literary world can be a bit exhausting, and it also means you’ll wind up reading a lot of books that just don’t do it for you. Nothing wrong with that; you can learn about your craft from any novel, good, bad, in your wheelhouse or so far out of it it’s not even in orbit around your wheelhouse.
But sometimes you need to feed your soul. Maybe that means taking a break to read some classics. Or some history. Or some trashy thrillers. Whatever your secret sauce, sometimes you have to put aside the new hotness out there and stop worrying about being able to jump into every single hashtag and just read for, you know, pleasure.
Me, I’m currently reading a history about restaurants in America. Will that ever be useful to me as research for my fiction, or teach me a better way to write a fight scene? Probably not. But damn, I’m enjoying it.
Push Yourself
I know that in the field of writing advice, push yourself isn’t going to win any awards for originality. But there’s some advice that’s so important it’s worth repeating—a lot.
Growing up, I read epic fantasy almost exclusively. This was largely due to the fact that the first books I ever read obsessively were the Chronicles of Narnia. I loved those books so intensely I re-read them for months, and when I was finally ready to read something new, I sought out similar experiences. For a long time, if it had a sword, dragon, or wizard on the cover, I was there.
That reflected in my writing, too. My early work is all fantasy. It’s all wizards and swords and dragons and hand-drawn maps of imagined worlds. A lot of people get into these sorts of writing ruts, and for many those ruts last their whole lives. Even folks who jump between genres and styles fairly often can get trapped into writing the same things all the time. But it’s essential to push yourself, to force yourself to explore different genres and styles, to experiment.
The Diversion
I started working on a sci-fi novel last year. Titled Rough Beast, it’s 100% in my SFF wheelhouse as a writer, and there’s a certain joy in working inside a framework you find familiar and comfortable. I’m having a blast working on it.
Then, in the midst of working on Rough Beast I had an idea for a completely different kind of story. Not SFF, not mystery or crime, not weird in any way. It’s a concept for a novel that’s completely different from just about anything I’ve ever worked on before.
I didn’t wait to finish Rough Beast. I started alternating between the two novels, working on a chapter in one and then jumping to a chapter in the other. Working outside of my usual comfort zone has been pretty exciting and a lot of fun. Will I finish this other novel? Will it be successful? Will I sell it? Who knows? And right now, who cares? Because I’m enjoying working on it, and it’s opening up channels in my head that haven’t been opened before. That’s why pushing yourself is important.
If the book turns out to be an enormous disaster, of course, I’ll deny it ever existed and sue anyone who mentions this blog post.
An Exercise: Write About Boring Shit
There are a lot of writing exercises you can take on in order to challenge yourself and push your personal creative or technical boundaries, and there’s a lot to be said for writing that isn’t about earning a fee or even finishing a major project like a novel. Sometimes writing just to write is the best way to focus on the mechanics of it; in other words, remove the exciting idea and the thrill of creativity and you can really look at that sausage being made.
Of course, for those of us who do a lot of freelance writing, that’s already pretty clear. And believe me, once you see that sausage being made it’s impossible to get the image out of your head: Every preposition, clause, and simile haunts you.
Here’s an exercise I often find useful: Write about something boring.
The Thrill is Gone
Look, most of us started writing fiction because we wanted to create. We had ideas, and no one else was offering up exactly the kind of book we wanted to read, so we started making one up ourselves. It’s often that simple. Our desire to write was often born from a thrilling idea we simply had to explore.
That’s great! It also means we can sometimes lose sight of the actual writing because we’re so dazzled by the ideas.
To counter that, try an exercise wherein you write about something 100% boring. Write about brushing your teeth. Or sitting and staring at a wall. Or your job. Find ways to make that incredibly boring subject dance off the page, but also pay attention to your sentences, your phrasing, your vocabulary. Since you’re bored by the subject, you’ll be able to ignore it in favor of those mechanics, and your flaws and weak spots will be easier to see.
And heck, if you do manage to make something terribly dull interesting solely through the power of your words, that’s an achievement. Sadly, no one is hiring writers who can make the boring interesting (or, possibly, that’s what everyone is hiring us to do). Believe me, if they were, I’d be rich.
Why Bad Writing is Good for You
Writing is a terrible way to live your life. It’s frustrating, it pays poorly, and 90% of your efforts will be what literary scientists call “utter shit.” Those are facts.
Most writers start to figure this out when they begin to listen to the advice they get, most notably the whole “write every day” mantra. We’ve discussed the dubious value of this advice before, but in general there’s value to working on your craft on a regular basis, of course. The problem with writing every day is that you become very painfully aware of how often your writing is flat-out terrible.
Look at it this way: If you only write when you’re fired up with inspiration and energy, it will seem easy and be quite fun. All writers know that magical moment when the stars align and you have a great idea burning through you and the time and energy to work on it. The problem, of course, is that if you spend your life waiting for those magical moments you’ll die with just a small handful of short works completed, because those moments don’t happen often. You have to find a way to work consistently in order to produce work on a reliable basis, and that means you’ll discover just how often your work is confused, poorly-written, and dull.
That’s fine. It’s good for you.
Bitter Pill
It’s easy to imagine that other writers are effortless geniuses. They can dash off a brilliant novel over lunch, they can summon a perfect bon mot in any situation, their sentences are minty fresh in the first draft. This is almost certainly not true; all writers have to work at it.
Seeing your own crappy writing on a regular basis is how you learn to do better. It’s that simple. In the rush of delirious creativity you often overlook clunky sentences, logical fallacies, and overuse of clichés because you’re riding high on that creative energy, sort of the way a drunk driver ignores stop signs, traffic lights, and human beings in the cross walk. You’ll learn a lot about writing simply by reviewing your own daily work and realizing that it’s absolutely terrible, then figuring out why it’s terrible.
Trust me when I say that all writers create terrible prose, all the time. The key is learning to a) recognize your terrible prose and b) how to fix, replace, or otherwise mitigate it. Embrace your bad writing.
Of course, sometimes a writer can actually sell bad writing. Not that I would know anything about this. Look, over there! A unicorn! <throws smoke bomb, runs away>
Just because It’s Real Doesn’t Make it Good
Most writers pursue verisimilitude, that magic effect that sparks suspension of disbelief and gets your reader on board with the lies you’re slinging. Sometimes it’s effortless, sometimes it requires a lot of heavy lifting, but once you achieve it you can take your story—and your reader—just about anywhere.
One major mistake writers make is assuming—wrongly—that if aspects of your story really happened you don’t have to work too hard on getting your readers’ buy-in. The logic is simple: No matter how insane a story or detail is, if it actually happened (whether in your direct experience and discovered through old-fashioned research) then it will be believable.
The fact is, things that actually happened are often the hardest aspects of your story to sell a reader.
The Enemy of the Good
This usually has nothing to do with the craziness of the concept. After all, readers are often perfectly willing to accept dragons, genius criminal investigators, and other fantastic literary ingredients without fuss. The problem is the unfounded confidence that a real story gives you, the writer.
Trying to sell the reader on a magical or otherwise fantastic idea? You subconsciously put in the work. You make sure you’ve got the rules worked out. You depict it carefully on the page so the reader buys in. You think through the ripple effects and details, the unintended consequences and the cheats. By the time your reader encounters it on the page, it’s fully-fleshed and able to withstand a good tire-kicking.
With real events, there’s a tendency to be lazy. After all, it really happened, so you don’t have to work so hard. The problem is, your reader doesn’t necessary know it really happened, and you’re (probably) not going to provide them with a link to a reliable source proving that it did. What you end up with is something incredible that feels fictional to the reader, and if you haven’t done the support work to sell it, they won’t buy it.
For example, I once drank sixteen Tequila Fanny Bangers and lived. No, really.
New Year Writing Goals
I’m not much for superstitions, and the concept of a New Year falls under that category. I love any excuse to have a little party, of course, but let’s face it: A year is an artificial concept in itself, something we invented in order to keep track of our shit. There’s nothing mystical going on when the calendar flips over to a new number.
Still, there’s a utility to picking a moment to look back and look forward. Did you achieve your literary goals this year, artistically and professionally? What will the goals be next year? This is as good a time as any to consider both areas. I’ll start.
2017: The Writing Year in Review
I’ve been writing professionally for a while now, so my goals tend to be pretty static. I went into 2017 with a few basic goals:
- Increase freelance income (always, that Cost of Living increase is no joke)
- Sell a book to a publisher
- Write 12 new short stories, minimum
- Sell a few short stories
- Launch an author newsletter
- Write 3 new novels
So how’d I do? I did in fact increase my freelance income by about 30% this year, mainly by picking up a new client while maintaining all my old ones. In fact, I’m making more money as a freelance writer than I was when I had a Day Job, which kind of amazes me. I did sell a book—Writing Without Rules will be published by Writer’s Digest Books in May 2018. I wrote my monthly short stories, and actually had a hot streak where three of them are actually pretty good and will be in my submission cycle next year, after a bit of polishing. I sold one new story and saw two others published. I did in fact launch my author newsletter, which is awesome and you should sign up for it pronto.
And I did in fact write 3 new novels, though 2 were reboots of projects I’ve tried to write before (and one of those is being rebooted again), and started 2 others.
So, 2017 goals achieved. My 2018 goals are basically the same. Writing is a long game—instead of concentrating on one project, I just keep my head down. I write. I submit. I talk to my agent and listen to her sage advice. I take the opportunities that come my way and make the best of them.
So what are your writing goals for 2018? The key to achieving them, I think, is simple: Put in the work. There’s no magic spell, and there’s no One Way to publish and sell work. But at the core of the infinite ways people succeed as writers is that one simple rule: Do the work. Write, revise, submit. Repeat.
Happy New Year, folks!